diff --git a/docs/position_paper.md b/docs/position_paper.md index de0e6576..3ed41a47 100644 --- a/docs/position_paper.md +++ b/docs/position_paper.md @@ -142,6 +142,24 @@ structure need review before they enter that structure. A system that accepts an confident-sounding correction without review is a generative system in different clothing. +Two invariants enforce this at the architecture level, not the policy level. + +**One-mutation-path invariant.** Knowledge enters the runtime field through +exactly one reviewed path. Every module that writes to the vault is explicitly +allowlisted in `tests/test_architectural_invariants.py::TestINV21OneMutationPath`. +Adding a new write path requires editing the allowlist with a documented +justification — the CI failure is the prompt to do so, not a roadblock to route +around. Any backdoor — a debug endpoint, an admin override, a fast-path for +"known good" sources — collapses the guarantee. The test makes that collapse +visible at commit time. + +**Non-hardening invariant.** No claim is ever locked. Even `COHERENT` is +revisable. There is no `final`, `frozen`, `axiom`, or `permanent` flag in the +codebase — their absence is enforced by test. `FALSIFIED` claims are retained for +audit and remain eligible for reinvestigation if new coherence emerges. A system +that cannot revise a settled belief because doing so would threaten its identity +has ossified. CORE cannot ossify by construction. + --- ## 4. Evidence @@ -286,6 +304,17 @@ accept arbitrary identity rewrites is not one that was trained to resist them. I is one where identity is a geometric trajectory, and a rewrite is a geometric violation detectable independently of the phrasing used to attempt it. +A concrete example: during architecture audit, CORE was found to have a +self-reinforcing fabrication path — the system could recall its own prior output +as evidence, cite it, and compound it across turns. This is not a hypothetical +failure mode; it is the epistemic structure of every system that stores its own +outputs without epistemic tagging. The path was found and closed architecturally: +every vault write now stamps an `EpistemicStatus`, the default is `SPECULATIVE`, +and any inference path that feeds the user-facing surface must pass +`min_status=COHERENT`. The fabrication loop cannot reopen quietly — the +one-mutation-path invariant ensures any new vault write path triggers a CI +failure until explicitly reviewed. + The deeper alignment claim: if cognition is decoding, then the space being decoded has structure that exists independently of the system decoding it. Truth is coherent. A system built to find coherent structure is, by construction, built to